Tennis is battling a “tsunami” of corruption, according to a $36-million report released Wednesday in London that revealed a teeming match-fixing scene at the lower levels of the sport.

Panel leader Adam Lewis told reporters that the game provided “a lamentably fertile breeding ground for breaches of integrity” — a problem so deep-rooted that, according to the European Sports Security Agency, tennis was responsible for three times as many suspicious betting alerts as all other sports put together.

The report quoted one betting operator who addressed the state of play at the lower levels of the game by saying “the situation in tennis is grimmer than grim,” and identified a “match-fixing season” that runs from October to the end of the year. During this period, the operator had detected “traces of up to two to three fixed matches a day in various ITF (International Tennis Federation) tournaments.”

Meanwhile, an experienced Tennis Integrity Unit investigator reported that “hundreds of matches at Futures level (both singles and doubles) are not being played fairly, with the numbers reducing as you move upwards through the ranks.”

Lewis’s Independent Review Panel was convened in February 2016, in response to a joint investigation by BBC and Buzzfeed, which had claimed to reveal “match-fixing evidence that tennis has kept secret for years.”

Tennis authorities insisted at the time that there was no deliberate cover-up, and the IRP report states: “The panel has not seen any evidence that the TIU acted to cover up breaches of integrity.”

However, one area of doubt will remain, after Lewis revealed that his panel had reached an impasse over the retirement of an unnamed player from the Association of Tennis Professionals Tour in 2003.

The IRP suspected that this player might have retired rather than undergo investigation by the TIU. Lewis said that they had seen a memorandum suggesting that such deals might have been available in the past. However, the IRP found no confirmed cases, and their inquiries into the 2003 retiree ran into an “assertion of confidentiality” — in Lewis’s words — which blocked their progress.

If such a case emerged — and involved a well-known player — it would stand as an exception to the rule that most match-fixers have been small-time scrappers on the fringes of the game. The IRP report stated “integrity issues have not reached a significant level at Grand Slam events, ATP or WTA tour events, WTA $125k events, or ITF women’s $60k and $100k events.”

Instead, suspicious betting patterns are usually restricted to the shadowy world of the Futures circuit. These humble events account for three-quarters of tennis’s so-called professional game — in terms of matches played — and one of the IRP’s most urgent recommendations is that their scoring data should no longer be sold to online betting companies.

Others include, that:

• The ITF should cancel its data deal with Sportradar, the sports-data company that enables betting on low-level tournaments. The ITF should then be compensated for its resulting financial loss by other tennis bodies, who will benefit from a cleaner sport.

• The Tennis Integrity Unit should increase its staffing — its director of integrity Nigel Willerton told the review panel he wants 12 investigators rather than six as at present — and move out of the building in London’s Roehampton neighbourhood that it currently shares with the ITF.

• The TIU should be more geographically diverse, with broader linguistic skills, rather than a largely anglophone body based in London. It should also recruit more specialists in online betting.

• Players who regularly crop up in suspicious betting alerts should be subject to provisional suspensions.

• All players who deliberately do not perform at their best should be more harshly treated, even if they are burned out or have personal reasons to want to leave an event.

• The pathway for emerging players should be improved to prevent the development of a large body of demoralized individuals who might fall prey to fixers.

• A new supervisory board should be constituted to oversee the TIU.

• Betting companies should no longer sponsor tournaments.

• Appearance fees, which subvert the competitive environment by giving players other reasons to turn up to an event apart from rankings points and prize money, should be made public.

• Tennis should co-operate more deeply with other sports in its efforts to eradicate corruption.

The panel’s report enjoyed broad support from tennis’s stakeholders, including the All England Club. But there was criticism from Sportradar, the Swiss sports-data company that has bought the rights to low-level tournament scores from the ITF for about $18 million per year.

In a statement, Alexander Inglot, Sportradar’s director of communications, described the IRP’s decision to call an end to the deal as “unrealistic (and) potentially unlawful.” Inglot added: “This will not stop betting on these matches (and) will almost certainly encourage black-market activity.”